It’s time for wind energy proponents to admit that their well-intended idea of wind energy has in fact had disastrous ecological consequences.

No technological development has ever so negatively impacted the environment and landscape like wind turbines have. Not only do they blight the scenic landscape and make people living near them ill, they are a serious killer of avian wildlife, as made evident by a recent German ZDF Terra X documentary shows (starts at 34:15 min). Hat-tip: Alessandra E.

One of Germany’s most protected bird species is the endangered red kite hawk. Today it faces a threat that is unprecedented: towering wind turbines strewn across the German landscape. The ZDF public television documentary reveals that the measures enacted by government wind park approval authorities have done nothing to protect this predatory bird.

The segment focusses on the southwest German state of Baden Württemberg, where its Green state minister is attempting to force through the construction of thousands of turbines on the regions idyllic landscape in a bid to go green.

To survive, the red kite finds its meals on the ground, and so it’s only natural that its sharp eyes remain focussed downward, and not ahead. That habit spells huge trouble for the bird in wind turbine regions. According to environmental journalist Andreas Kieling: “Ornithologists and experts have called wind turbines bird shredders.”

Worldwide, the ZDF reports, only about 25,000 pairs of the red kite remain — 60% of them are in wind-turbine country Germany.

Ignorance, corruption and criminal sabotage

Using a fake owl (owls are the enemies of red kites) as bait (37:20), researchers caught a red kite and tagged it with transmitter, thus allowing them to later track the bird’s flight patterns and the actual living space the bird really requires. As the results will show, the living space required by red kites is far greater than what is claimed by the wind industry and the officials who approve the parks.

Wind turbine approval boards have the responsibility of keeping wind turbines at a safe distance away. Unfortunately, likely due to a mixture of ignorance and outright corruption, the wind turbine rules in many cases call for a setback distance of a mere 1000 meters from a nest. We reported here last year of how stork nests were likely criminally sabotaged in order to clear the way for wind park construction approval!

Need 12 sq. km of space, and not 3 sq km.

Just how far the birds fly from their depends strongly on how far they have to go to find their prey. In the ZDF Terra X documentary, days later the researchers provided a graphical image of the flight activity of the tagged bird.

The result is that the endangered red kite needs far more than a single measly 1 kilometer setback distance and 3 sq km of safe activity area as often claimed, but rather it needs some 12 sq km of space. In fact the examined bird located near Lake Constance flew as far as 19 km away from her nest (41:05). Other bird species showed similar patterns and space needs, yet turbine approval boards insist the current requirements are enough.

The experts disagree and summarize that the now specified setback distances offer “certainly no effective protection” for the birds.

Sooner or later every red kite ends up in the area of a turbine. The risk of a collision is hugely large.”

The expert then adds that in the areas where there is a large population, as is the case near Lake Constance, there should be “absolutely no wind turbines“, or to shut them down when the birds are hunting.

The ZDF Terra X report says that no one knows just how many red kites fall victim to turbines each year. Counting is difficult because a struck bird is often quickly taken away by foxes or other scavengers. One thing is sure: turbines are killing the endangered birds, and likely in numbers that wind lobby hopes will never be known.

You may not be making excuses but you are still trying to divert the argument away from the damage done to birds by wind turbines. If you have something useful to contribute, fine; if not why not go off and start your own thread somewhere?

A slaughter? Where is the evidence? You skeptics need evidence for everything to accept it as a possibility, but with those “slaughters” it is enough to say “no one knows just how many red kites fall victim to turbines each year. Counting is difficult because a struck bird is often quickly taken away by foxes or other scavengers” … How convenient.

I guess you didn’t watch the film. There are no official numbers, but there are enough good estimates on the number of victims of wind turbines each year. But none of that impresses you, and so we’ll put you down as being in the same camp as the profit hungry wind lobby.
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At the current rate of wind turbine construction across the globe, that number will soon swell to about 10 million bat deaths per year due to wind turbines. Several already-endangered species of bats are thus projected to go extinct during the next few decades.

Do you care, SebastianH? Of course you don’t. What’s the evidence for your indifference? When reading about the wildlife (birds) costs of erecting wind turbines, you cutely respond by concocting an analogy pertaining to red kites.

Please find out how many bats die of other causes. I found an interesting statistic about birds … while 234000 birds were killed by wind turbines in 2013 (study), up to 1 billion died by colliding with windows and cats killed around 4 billion. Multiple other human causes like cars and pesticides are killing birds in the millions.

So what are the numbers for bats? Do wind turbines really cause them to go extinct? Are there easy fixes besides not building wind turbines if this would really be a big problem? Why does the OP need to call it a slaughter?

If you had the choice of lifting 60 million people out of poverty (or at least allow them access to electricity) with natural gas and coal power, or lifting 5 million people out of poverty with wind and solar power, which would you choose?

I already provided the scientific conclusion: 4 million bats per year are killed by wind turbines, and wind blades are now the leading cause of mass deaths in bats.

Would you rather lift 60 million people out of poverty with gas and coal, or 5 million out of poverty with wind and solar? Is your non-answer another indication that you’d prefer to let poor people go without access to refrigeration, lighting, hospital services…for the sake of what? Increasing CO2 emissions?

“ndependent article and arguments based on WWF report. Hardly an objective source.”

the source does not matter here. this is a fact based approach:

either the 60% wind in Scotland are killing significant amounts of birds or those places with 10% do not have a problem at all.

the obvious answer is, that birds are doing fine in Scotland and even 100% wind will have not such a huge impact. The simple reason for that is, what my sources tell you: other causes of bird killing are much worse than wind power. This topic simply is fake news.

Ok, so let wind mills start at higher windspeeds in regions where bats are active. Owner loses around 1% of generated power and 90% of the “slaughtered” bats are saved.

Still waiting on numbers about bats … for birds, windmills are a minor threat compared to cars, powerlines, oh … and cats. For bats it should be owls and WNS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-nose_syndrome) which cause the highest death tolls.

O’Shea et al., 2016“Two factors led to a major shift in causes of MMEs [multiple mortality events] in bats at around 2000: the global increase of industrial wind-power facilities and the outbreak of white-nose syndrome in North America. Collisions with wind turbines and white-nose syndrome are now the leading causes of reported MMEs [multiple mortality events] in bats.”
—Frick et al., 2017“Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities. However, population-level impacts are unknown as we lack basic demographic information about these species. We investigated whether fatalities at wind turbines could impact population viability of migratory bats, focusing on the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), the species most frequently killed by turbines in North America. Using expert elicitation and population projection models, we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction. For example, the hoary bat population could decline by as much as 90% in the next 50 years if the initial population size is near 2.5 million bats and annual population growth rate is similar to rates estimated for other bat species (λ = 1.01). Our results suggest that wind energy development may pose a substantial threat to migratory bats in North America. If viable populations are to be sustained, conservation measures to reduce mortality from turbine collisions likely need to be initiated soon. Our findings inform policy decisions regarding preventing or mitigating impacts of energy infrastructure development on wildlife.”
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Do you care, SebastianH? No, you don’t. That’s why you pathetically pivot to talking about red kite deaths.

Well.. I do what I can NOT to reduce my CO2 output, even if it does cost me financially. (I can proudly say that, according to the electricity bill, by myself I use as nearly much electricity as a three person family 🙂 )

I fight as hard as I can to bring some REALISM into the debate. Its a fight against a load of brain-washed anti-nature AGW religious activists, intent on bring the civilised world to its knees, and who will DENY every fact that brings a light onto their mentally deficit AGW agenda.

I’ve learned that CO2 in the atmosphere was getting dangerously low with respect to plant growth. It seems about 600 ppm to 800 ppm would give Earth a good cushion. Now it is just over about 400 ppm.

Knowing this, we have been burning more wood in the stove and trying to cut down on the electricity used. Our electricity is from hydro (big dams), and our house, except for the wood stove, is all electric. Dropping water through a turbine doesn’t help keep the CO2 growing.

We can’t do much more, but we do try to use charcoal for grilling when the weather is good. It has been too cold and snowy. We (getting older now) are not looking forward to the next glacial advance – we can see a glacier from here, but not the one that will advance on our house.

“I have a question. Since upon hearing about Global Warming, then Climate Change, what have you and your family sacrificed in your lifestyle?”

1. Price rises across the board because of worthless ‘carbon tax’ measures.
2. Removing the TV from the building as there is too much ‘climate’ propaganda broadcast.
3. We now joke about ‘sustainable’ being the new BS word of the moment — the only upside to modern politics.

His calculation is simply false. neither is the support between 10 and 13 ct, nor is such a average useful for anything.

There is a baseline for the price and that is the market price. so it makes a huge difference, whether you pay 20 ct first and 4 ct later or whether you pay an average of 10 ct. Because if the market price is above 4ct, you simply do not pay anything at a 4 ct subsidy guaranteed price).

Today we had a a very good wind and solar day, but the market price was still between 2.5ct and 4ct so a wind park above 8 years would have barely gotten any subsidy. This would be totally different at an average 13 ct payout…

bids for the first 5 minutes of the 30 minute tender are incredibly high, then the price turns negative for the rest of the time span. As the price calculation is an average, fossil fuels get massively overpaid.

there also is a trend of having “reliable” plants not available during the most important times, driving up prices.

This zero cent subsidy offshore windparks are turning into a master lesson on fake news. The comment section of all papers (but mostly the conservative ones) are actually filled with hateful comments against wind power. They all ignore the basic facts (zero subsidy) and simply complain about all sort of stuff.

There is only a handful of planned projects left and it is unclear if those will finish. So we might need those wind plants and you folks should start bringing in ideas how we can stop them from killing your beloved birds!

[…] Measures To Protect Endangered Birds From Wind Turbines Completely Ineffective! It’s time for wind energy proponents to admit that their well-intended idea of wind energy has in fact had disastrous ecological consequences. No technological development has ever so negatively impacted the environment and landscape like wind turbines have. Not only do they blight the scenic landscape and make people living near them ill, they are a serious killer of avian wildlife, as made evident by a recent German ZDF Terra X documentary shows (starts at 34:15 min). Hat-tip: Alessandra E. […]

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